GUY became much occupied with the best way of breaking to his father the news of his engagement. He wished it were his marriage of which he had to inform him; for there was about marriage such a beautiful finality of spilt milk that the briefest letter would have settled everything. If now he wrote to announce an engagement, he ran the risk of his father's refusal to come and pay him that visit on which he was building such hopes from the combined effect of Pauline and Plashers Mead in restoring to the schoolmaster the bright mirror of his own youth. It would scarcely be fair to the Greys to introduce him while he was still ignorant of the relation in which he was supposed to stand to them, for they could scarcely be expected to regard him as a man to be humoured up to such a point. After all, it was not as if he in his heart looked to his father for practical help: in reality he knew already that the engagement would meet with his opposition notwithstanding Pauline ... notwithstanding Plashers Mead. Perhaps it would be better to write and tell him about it: if he came, it would obviate an awkward explanation and there could be no question of false pretences: if he declined to come, no doubt he would write such a letter as would justify his son in holding him up to the Greys as naturally intractable. Indeed if it were not that he knew how sensitive Pauline was to the paternal benediction, he would have made no attempt to present him at all.

His father kept him waiting over a week before he replied to the announcement Guy had ultimately decided to send him; and when it came, the letter did not promise the most favourable prospect.

There was something in the taste of marmalade very appropriate to an unpleasant letter, and Guy wondered how many of them he had read at breakfast to the accompaniment of the bitter savour and the sound of crackling toast. He also wondered what was the real reason of his father's coming. Was it curiosity, or the prospect of lecturing a certain number of people gathered together to hear his opinion? Was it with the hope of dissuasion, or was it merely because he had settled to come on the fifth of September and could not bear to thwart that finicking passion of his for knowing what he was going to do a month beforehand?

Anyhow, whatever the reason, he was coming, and the next problem was to furnish for him a bedroom. How much had he in the bank? £4 16s. and there was a blank counter-foil which Guy vaguely thought represented a cheque for £2. Of course Pauline's ring had lowered his balance rather prematurely this quarter; he ought to be very economical during the next one and, as ill luck would have it, next quarter would have to provide fuel. £2 16s. was not much to spend on furnishing a bedroom even if the puny balance were not needed for the current expenses of the three weeks to Michaelmas. Could he borrow some bedroom furniture from the Rectory? No doubt Mrs. Grey would be amused and delighted to lend all he wanted, but it seemed rather an ignominious way of celebrating his engagement. Could he sleep on the chest in the hall? and as it wobbled to his touch, he decided that not only could he not sleep on it nor in it, but that it would not even serve as a receptacle for his clothes.

"Miss Peasey," he said, when the housekeeper came in to see if he had finished breakfast. "My father is coming to stay here on Thursday."

Miss Peasey smiled encouragingly with the strained look in her eyes that always showed when she was hoping to find out from his next sentence what he had told her. Guy shouted his information over again, when, of course Miss Peasey pretended she had heard him all the time.

"Well, that will make quite a little variety, I'm sure."

"Where will he sleep?" Guy asked.

Miss Peasey jumped and said that there, she'd never thought of that.

"Well, think about it now, Miss Peasey."

Miss Peasey thought hard, but unfruitfully.

"Could you borrow a bed in the town?" Guy shouted.

"Well, wouldn't it seem rather funny? Why don't you send in to Oxford and buy a bed, Mr. Hazlewood?"

Her pathetic trust in the strength of his financial resources, which Guy usually tried to encourage, was now rather irritating.

"It seems hardly worth while to buy a bed for two or three days," he objected.

"Which reminds me," said Miss Peasey, "that you'll really have to give that Bob another good thrashing, for he's eaten all the day's butter."

"Well, we can buy more butter in Wychford, but we can't get a bed," Guy laughed.

"Oh, he didn't touch the bread," said Miss Peasey. "Trust him for that. I never knew a large dog so dainty before."

Guy decided to postpone the subject of the bed and try Miss Peasey more personally.

"Could you spare your chest of drawers?" he asked at top voice.

Miss Peasey, however, did not answer and from her complete indifference to his question Guy knew that she did not like the idea of such a loan. It looked as if he would be compelled to borrow the furniture from the Rectory; and then he thought how after all it would be a doubly good plan to do so, inasmuch as it would partially involve his father in the obligations of a guest. Moreover it could scarcely fail to be a slight reproach to him that his son should have to borrow bedroom furniture from the family of his betrothed.

Pauline was of course delighted at the idea of lending the furniture, and she and Guy had the greatest fun together in amassing enough to equip what would really be a very charming spare room. Deaf and dumb Graves was called in; and Birdwood helped also, under protest at the hindrance to his work, but at the same time revelling, if Birdwood could be said to revel, in the diversion. Mrs. Grey presided over the arrangement and fell so much in love with the new bedroom that she pillaged the Rectory much more ruthlessly than Pauline, and in the end they all decided that Guy's father would have the most attractive bedroom in Wychford. Guy with so much preparation on hand had no time to worry about the conduct of his father's visit, and after lunch on Thursday he got into the trap beside Godbold and drove off equably enough to meet the train at Shipcot.

Mr. Hazlewood was in appearance a dried-up likeness of his son, and Guy often wondered if he would ever present to the world this desiccated exterior. Yet after all it was not so much his father's features as his cold eyes that gave this effect of a chilly force: he himself had his mother's eyes and, thinking of hers burning darkly from the glooms of her sick bed, Guy fancied that he would never wither to quite the inanimate and discouraging personality on the platform in front of him.

"The train's quite punctual," said Mr. Hazlewood in rather an aggrieved tone of voice, such as he might have adopted if he had been shown a correct Latin exercise by a boy whom he was anxious to reprove.

"Yes, this train is usually pretty punctual," Guy answered, and for a minute or two after a self-conscious handshake they talked about trains, each, as it seemed, trying to throw upon the other the responsibility of any conversation that might have promoted their ease.

Guy introduced his father to Godbold, who greeted him with a kind of congratulatory respect and assumed toward Guy a manner that gave the impression of sharing with Mr. Hazlewood in his paternity.

"Hope you're going to pay us a good long visit," said Godbold hospitably flicking the pony.

Mr. Hazlewood, who squashed as he was between Guy and fat Godbold looked more sapless than ever, said he proposed to stay until the day after to-morrow.

"Then you won't see us play Shipcot on Saturday, the last match of the season?" said Godbold in disappointed benevolence.

"No, I shan't, I'm afraid. You see, my son is not so busy as I am."

"Ah, but he's been very busy lately. Isn't that right, Mr. Hazlewood?" Godbold chuckled with a wink across at Guy. "Well, we've all been expecting it for some time past and he has our good wishes. That he has. As sweetly pretty a young lady as you'll see in a month of Sundays."

His father shrank perceptibly from a dominical prevision so foreign to his nature, and Guy changed the conversation by pointing out features in the landscape.

"Extraordinarily inspiring sort of country," he affirmed.

"So I should imagine," said his father. "Though precisely what that epithet implies I don't quite know."

Guy was determined not to be put out of humour and, surrendering the epithet at once, he substituted 'bracing'.

"So is Hampshire," his father snapped.

"I hope Wilkinson's successor has turned out well," Guy ventured, in the hope that such a direct challenge would force a discharge of grievances. Surprizingly, however, his father talked without covert reproaches of the successor's virtues, of the field-club he had started, of his popularity with the boys and of the luck which had brought him along at such short notice. At any rate, thought Guy, he could not be blamed for having caused any inconvenience to the school by his refusal to take up office at Fox Hall. The constraint of the long drive came to an end with the first view of Plashers Mead, at which his father gazed with the sort of mixture of resentment, interest and alarm he might have displayed at the approach of a novel insect.

"It looks as if it would be very damp," was his only comment.

Here Godbold, who had perhaps for some time been conscious that all was not perfectly well between his passengers, interposed with a defence of Plashers Mead.

"Lot of people seeing it from here think it's damp. But it isn't. In fact it's the driest house in Wychford. And do you know for why, sir? Because it's so near running water. Running water keeps off the damp. Doctor Brydone told me that. 'Running water,' he says to me, 'keeps off the damp.' Those were his words."

Mr. Hazlewood eyed Godbold distastefully, that is so far as without turning his head he could eye him at all. Then the trap pulled up by the gate of Plashers Mead, Guy took his father's bag, and they passed in together. The noise of wheels died away, and here in the sound of the swift Greenrush Guy felt that hostility must surely be renounced at the balm of this September afternoon shedding serene sunlight. He began to display his possessions with the confidence their beauty always gave him.

"Pretty good old apple-trees, eh? Ribston pippins nearly all of them. The blossom was rather spoilt by that wet May, but there's not such a bad crop considering. I like this salmon-coloured phlox. General something or other beginning with an H it's called. Mr. Grey gave me a good deal. The garden of course was full of vegetables, when I had it first. I must send you some clumps of this phlox to Galton. Of course, I got rid of the vegetables."

"Yes, of course," agreed Mr. Hazlewood dryly.

"Doesn't the house look jolly from here? It's pretty old, you know. About 1590 I believe. It's a wonderful place, isn't it? Hulloa, there's my housekeeper. Miss Peasey, here's my father. She's very deaf, so you'll have to shout."

Mr. Hazlewood, who never shouted even at the naughtiest boy in his school, shuddered faintly at his son's invitation and bowed to Miss Peasey with a formality of disapproval that seemed to include her in the condemnation of all he beheld.

"Quite a resemblance, I'm sure," Miss Peasey archly declared. "Tea will be ready at four o'clock and Mr. Hazlewood Senior's room is all in order for him." Then she disappeared in the direction of the kitchen.

"A little empty, I'm afraid," said Guy, as his father looked round the hall.

"Is that water I hear?"

"Yes, the river washes the back of the house."

"And this place isn't damp?"

"Not a bit," Guy declared positively.

"Well, it smells of bronchitis and double-pneumonia."

Guy showed his father the dining-room.

"I've got it rather jolly, I think," he ventured.

"Yes, my candlesticks and chairs, that your mother lent you for your rooms at Balliol, look very well," his father agreed.

Guy led the way to the spare bedroom.

"No wonder you spent all your money," Mr. Hazlewood commented, surveying the four-post bed and the Jacobean furniture. "How on earth did you manage to afford all this luxury?"

"Oh, I picked it up somehow," said Guy lightly. He had decided on second thoughts not to reveal the secret of the Rectory's loan.

When his father had rid himself of the dust from his journey, Guy introduced him proudly to his own room.

"Well, this is certainly quite a pleasant place," Mr. Hazlewood admitted. "If not too draughty with those two windows."

"You must scratch a motto on the pane with the diamond-pencil," Guy suggested.

"My motto is hard work."

"Well, write that. Or at any rate put your initials and the date."

His father took up the pencil with that expression of superiority which Guy most hated, and scratched his name rather awkwardly on the glass.

"I hope people won't suppose that is my ordinary hand," he said, grimly regarding the John Hazlewood of his inscription. During tea Guy wondered when he ought introduce the subject of Pauline. Beyond Godbold's unfortunate allusion on the drive, nothing had been said by either of them; and Plashers Mead had not as yet effected that enchantment of his father's senses which would seem to proclaim the moment as propitious. How remote they were from one another, sitting here at tea! Really his father had not accorded him any salutation more cordial than the coldly absent-minded 'good dog' he had just given to Bob. Yet there must be points of contact in their characters. There must be in himself something of his father. He could not so ridiculously resemble him and yet have absolutely nothing mentally in common. Perhaps his father did himself an injustice by his manner, for after all he had presented him with that £150. If he could only probe by some remark a generous impulse, Guy felt that in himself the affection of wonted intercourse over many years would respond immediately with a warmth of love. His father had cared greatly for his mother; and could not the love they had both known supply them with the point of sympathetic contact that would enable them to understand the ulterior intention of their two diverging lives?

"It was awfully good of you, Father, to come down and stay here," said Guy. "I've really been looking forward to showing you the house. I think, perhaps, you understand now how much I've wanted to be here?"

Guy waited anxiously.

"I've never thought you haven't wanted to be here," his father replied. "But between what we want and what we owe there is a wide gap."

Oh, why was a use to be made of these out-of-date weapons? Why could not one or two of his prejudices be surrendered, so that there were a chance of meeting him half-way?

"But sometimes," said Guy desperately, "inclination and duty coincide."

"Very rarely, I'm afraid, in this world."

"Do they in the next then?" asked Guy a little harshly, hating the conventionality of the answer that seemed to crystallize the intellectual dishonesty of a dominie's existence. He knew that the next world was merely an arid postulate which served for a few theorems and problems of education, and that duty and desire must only be kept apart on account of the hierarchical formulae of his craft. He must eternally appear as half-inhuman as all the rest of the Pharisees: priests, lawyers and schoolmasters, they were all alike in relying for their livelihood upon a capacity for depreciating human nature.

"I was merely using a figure of speech," said his father.

Exactly, thought Guy, and how was he ever to justify his love for Pauline to a man whose opinions could never be expressed except in figures of speech? He made up his mind to postpone the visit to the Rectory until to-morrow. Evidently it was not going to be made even moderately easy to broach the subject of Pauline.

"I expect you'd like to have a look at some of my work," he suggested.

"Very much," said Mr. Hazlewood; and in a moment with his dry assent he had reduced all his son's achievement to the level of a fifth-form composition. Guy took the manuscripts out of his desk, and disengaging from the heap any poems that might be ascribed to the influence of Pauline, he presented the rest to his father. Mr. Hazlewood settled himself as comfortably as he could ever seem to be comfortable and solemnly began to read without comment. Guy would have liked to get up and leave him alone, for though he assured himself that the opinion whether favourable or unfavourable did not matter, his suspense was sharp and the inexpression of his father's demeanour, that assumption of tutorial impartiality, kept him puzzling and unable to do anything but watch the critic's face and toy mechanically with the hair of Bob's sentimental head upon his knee.

At last the manuscripts were finished, and Guy sat back for the verdict.

"Oh, yes, I like some very much," said Mr. Hazlewood. "But I can't help thinking that all of them could have been written as well in recreation after the arduousness of a decent profession. However, you've burned your boats as far as Fox Hall is concerned, and I shall certainly be the first to congratulate you, if you bring your ambition to a successful issue."

"You mean monetarily?" Guy asked.

His father did not answer.

"You wouldn't count as a successful issue recognition from the people who care for poetry?" Guy went on.

"I'm not particularly impressed by contemporary taste," said Mr. Hazlewood. "We seem to me to be living in a time when all the great men have gone, and the new generation does not appear likely to fill very adequately the gap they have left."

"I wonder if there has ever been a time when people have not said just what you're saying? Do you seriously think you'd recognize a great man if you saw him?"

"I hope I should," said his father looking perfectly convinced that he would.

"Well, I don't believe you would," said Guy. "How do you know I'm not a great man?"

His father laughed dryly.

"I don't know, my dear Guy, of course and nothing would gratify me more than to find out that you were. But at least you'll allow me to observe that great men are generally remarkable for their modesty."

"Yes, after they've been accorded the homage of the world," Guy argued. "They can afford to be modest then. I fancy that most of them were self-confident in their youth. I hope they were, poor devils. It must have been miserable for most of them, if they weren't."

"However," said Mr. Hazlewood. "All these theories of juvenile grandeur, interesting though they may be, do not take us far along the road of practical politics. I'm to understand, am I, that you are quite determined to remain here?"

"For another year at any rate," Guy said. "That is until I have a volume of poems ready."

"And your engagement?" asked his father.

Guy smiled to himself. It was a minor triumph, but it was definitely a triumph to have made his father be the first to mention the subject that had stood at the back of their minds ever since they met on the Shipcot platform.

"Look here, before we discuss that I want you to see Pauline. I think you'll understand my point of view more clearly after you've seen her. Now, wouldn't you like to take a stroll round Wychford? The architecture...."

Guy and his father wandered about until dusk, and in the evening after dinner they played piquet.

"I suppose you wouldn't enjoy a walk in the moonlight?" Guy suggested after the third hand.

"I have my health to think about. Term begins in a fortnight you know," said Mr. Hazlewood.

Guy had pulled back the curtains and was watching the full moon. This, though ten days short of the actual anniversary, was the lunary festival of the night when he first saw Pauline. Might it be accepted as a propitious omen? Who could say? They talked of dull subjects until it was time to go to bed.

Guy had sent a note to Mrs. Grey, suggesting that he should bring his father to tea next day; and so about four o'clock they set out to the Rectory, the lover in great trepidation of spirit. His father was seeming much more than ever parched and inhuman, and Guy foresaw that his effect upon Pauline would be disastrous. Nor did he feel that the strain upon his own nerves was going to be the best thing for the situation. On the way to the Rectory they met young Brydone, and Guy very nearly invited him to accompany them, in a desperate impulse to evoke a crowd in which he could lose this disturbing consciousness of his father's presence. However, he managed to avoid such a subversion of his attitude; and in a few minutes they were in the hall of the Rectory, where Mrs. Grey, as nervously agitated as she could be, was welcoming them. Luckily Margaret had arrived on the scene before Pauline, and Guy managed to place his father next to her, while he took up the task of trying to compose Mrs. Grey. At last Pauline came in, and Guy seemed to be only aware of a tremendous increase in the noise of the conversation. He realized that it was due to himself's talking nonsense at the top of his voice and that Pauline was vainly trying to get on with his father. Monica had gone to look for the Rector, and Mrs. Grey was displaying the kind of treasures she would produce at a mother's meeting, treasures to which his father paid but the most scant attention. The whole room seemed to revolve round his father who for Guy had become the only person in focus, as he stood there parched and inhuman and perhaps himself a little shy of what he was evidently supposing to be a very mad family. Guy, so miserable was he feeling at his father's coldness of manner toward the Greys, wished passionately that his mother were alive, because he knew how much she would have appreciated them. Monica had now come back with information that the Rector was undiscoverable, so Mrs. Grey volunteered to show Mr. Hazlewood the garden.

"She'll tell you all the flowers wrong," Pauline warned him.

Mr. Hazlewood bowed.

"I'm afraid I know nothing about flowers."

"Guy has learnt a lot from Father," said Pauline. "Haven't you, Guy?"

She was making the bravest effort, but it was hopeless, utterly hopeless, Guy thought.

How the promenade round these gardens that were haunted with his and her delights was banishing them one by one. How endless it was, and how complete was the failure to incorporate his father in a life which his advent had so detestably disturbed. Guy acknowledged that the meeting between him and Pauline had served no purpose, and as he looked forward to the final battle between their wills this evening, he set his teeth with rage to defeat his father, at the moment caring not at all if he never saw him again.

Guy knew, as they were walking back to Plashers Mead, how little worth while it was to ask what his father had thought of the Greys; but nevertheless he could not resist the direct enquiry.

"They seem a very happy-go-lucky family," was the reply. "I thought it extremely strange that Mr. Grey did not take the trouble to be at home for my visit. I should have thought that in regard to his daughter's future I might be considered sufficiently ... however, it's all of a piece."

Guy hated the mock-modest lacuna in the characterization, and he thought of the many schoolmasters he had known whose consciousness of external opinion never allowed them to claim a virtue for themselves, although their least action always contained an implication of merit.

Guy made some excuse for the Rector's absence and rather moodily walked on beside his father. The battle should be to-night; and after dinner he came directly to the point.

"I hope you liked Pauline?"

"My dear Guy, your impulsiveness extends too far. How can I after a few minutes' conversation pronounce an opinion?"

"But she's not a pathological case," cried Guy in exasperation.

"Precisely," retorted his father. "And therefore I pay her the compliment of not rushing into headstrong approval, or disapproval. Certainly she seemed to me superficially a very charming girl, but I should be inclined to think somewhat excitable."

"Of course, she was shy."

"Naturally. These sudden immersions in new relationships do not make for ease. I was myself a little embarrassed. But, after all, the question is not whether I like—er—Pauline, but whether I am justified on her account as well as on yours in giving my countenance to this ridiculous engagement. Please don't interrupt me. My time is short, and I must as your father fulfil my obligations to you by saying what I have to say."

Even in his speech he was epistolary, and while he spoke Guy was all the time, as it were, tearing him into small pieces and dropping him deliberately into the waste-paper-basket.

"Had I been given an opportunity," his father went on, "of speaking privately with Mr. Grey, I should have let him plainly understand how much I deplored your unjustifiable embarkation upon this engagement. You have, frankly, no right to engage yourself to a girl when you are without the means to bring the pledge to fruition. You possess, it is true, an income of £150 a year—too little to make you really independent, too much to compel you to relinquish your own mad scheme of livelihood."

"I have had the privilege of reading your verse," he continued, protesting against an interruption with upraised hand. "Well, I am glad enough to say that it seems to me promising: but what is promising verse? A few seedlings in a flower-pot that even if they come to perfection will serve no purpose but of decoration. It is folly or mere wanton self-deception for you to pretend that you can live by poetry. Why, even if you were an American you couldn't live by poetry. Now please let me finish. My commonsense no doubt strikes you as brutal, but if, when it is your turn to speak, you can produce the shadow of a probability that you will ever earn your own living, I shall be only too willing to be convinced. I am not so much enamoured of my schoolmaster's life as to wish to bind you down to that; but between being a schoolmaster and being what the world would call an idle young poseur lies a big gulf. Why did not you stick to your Macedonian idea? Surely that was romantic enough to please even you. No, the whole manner of your present life spells self-indulgence and I warn you it will inevitably bring in its train the results of self-indulgence. My dear Guy, do something. Don't stay here talking of what you are going to do. Say good-bye for the present to Pauline and do something. If she is fond of you, she will be prouder of you when she sees that you are determined to fight to win her. My boy, I speak to you very seriously and I warn you that this is the last protest I shall make. You are behaving wrongly: her parents are behaving wrongly. If you must write, get some regular work. Why not try for the staff of some reputable paper like The Spectator?"

"Good heavens!" Guy ejaculated.

"Well, there may be other reputable papers, though I confess The Spectator is my favourite."

"Yes, I know. It probably would be."

"It's this terrible inaction," his father went on. "I don't know how you can tolerate the ignominious position in which you find yourself. To me it would be unendurable."

Mr. Hazlewood sighed with the satisfaction of unburdening himself and waited for his son to reply, who with a tremendous effort not to spoil the force of his argument by losing his temper began calmly enough:

"I have never contended that I should earn my living by poetry. What I have hoped is that when my first book appears it would be sufficiently remarkable to restore your confidence in me."

"In other words," his father interrupted, "to tempt me to support you—or rather as it now turns out to help you to get married."

"Well, why not?" said Guy. "I'm your only son. You can spare the money. Why shouldn't you help me? I'm not asking you to do anything before I've justified myself. I'm only asking you to wait a year. If my book is a failure, it will be I who pay the penalty, not you. My confidence will be severely damaged whereas in your case only your conceit will be faintly ruffled."

"Were I really a conceited man, I should resent your last remark," said his father. "But let it pass, and finish what you were going to say."

Guy got up and went to the window, seeking to find from the moonlight a coolness that would keep his temper in hand.

"Would you have preferred that I did not ask Pauline to marry, that I made love to her without any intention of marriage?"

"Not at all," his father replied. "I imagine that you still possess some self-restraint, that when you began to feel attracted to her you could have wrestled with yourself against what in the circumstances was a purely selfish emotion."

"But why, why? What really good reason can you bring forward against my behaviour, except reasons based on a cowardly fear of not being prosperous? You have always impressed on me so deeply the identity of your youthful ambitions with mine that I don't suppose I'm assuming too much when I ask what you would have done, if you had met Mother when you were not in a position to marry her immediately? Would you have said nothing?"

"I hope I should have had sufficient restraint not to want to marry anybody until I was able to offer material support as well as a higher devotion."

"But if ... oh, love is not a matter of the will."

"Excuse me," his father contradicted obstinately. "Everything is a matter of will. That is precisely the point I am trying to make."

Guy marched over to the fireplace and, balancing himself on the fender, proclaimed the attainment of a deadlock.

"You and I, my dear Father, differ in fundamentals. Supposing I admit for a moment that I may be wrong, aren't you just as wrong in not trying to see my point of view? Supposing for instance Tennyson had paid attention to criticism—I don't mean of his work, but of his manner of life—what would have happened?"

"I can't afford to run the risk of being considered the fond parent by announcing you to the world as a second Tennyson. Thirty-five years of a schoolmaster's life have at least taught me that parents as parents have a natural propensity toward the worst excesses of human folly."

"Then in other words," Guy responded, "I'm to mess up my life to preserve your dignity. That's what it amounts to. I tell you I believe in myself. I'm convinced that beside will, there is destiny."

Mr. Hazlewood sniffed.

"Destiny is the weak man's canonization of his own vices."

"Well, then I will succeed," retorted Guy. "Moreover I will succeed in my own way. It seems a pity that we should argue acrimoniously. I shall say no more. I accept the responsibility. For what you've done for me I'm very much obliged. Would you care for a hand at piquet?"

"Oh, certainly," said his father.

Guy hugged himself with another minor triumph. At least it was he who had determined when the discussion should be closed.

The next day, as Guy stood on the Shipcot platform and watched the slow train puffing away into the unadventurous country, he had a brief sentiment of regret for the failure of his father's visit and made up his mind to write to him a letter to-morrow, which would sweeten a little of the bitterness between them. The bees buzzing round the wine-dark dahlias along the platform were once again audible: and close at hand was the hum of a reaper-and-binder. But as he drove back to Wychford his father passed from his mind, and mostly Guy thought of walking with Pauline under the pale and ardent blue of this September sky that was reflected in the chicory flowers along the sparse and dusty hedgerow.